QuoteReplyTopic: Would boiling tap water kill h7n9? Posted: April 26 2013 at 4:31pm

Gave up buying 1 gallon jugs of water. Long storage they all leaked.This time I'll pick up those 4 gallon jugs, much sturdier. Would boiling tap water be enough to kill this virus? If so, how long. Would the inside of the pot also be sanitized? At what point would you switch to bottled from treated city water?

Gave up buying 1 gallon jugs of water. Long storage they all leaked.This time I'll pick up those 4 gallon jugs, much sturdier. Would boiling tap water be enough to kill this virus? If so, how long. Would the inside of the pot also be sanitized? At what point would you switch to bottled from treated city water?

Really this depends. It is not really any virus you've got to worry about when it comes to water as much as it is chemical or bacterial contamination. Virus load per gallon of tap water, even if it were contaminated, would be so low that boiling it would be overkill because you could drink it straight and not get the flu.

The problem is that if things get significantly out of hand, electrical power could be affected! If the power goes out to the water treatment facility, and straight source water, be it lake or river, gets into the tap supply, your tap water will become unpotable within a matter of days, a week at most depending on total load. If you're in a major metro area, like I am, the water will go from drinkable to unpotable in about three days. (I'm in Minneapolis)

If you simply filled the bottles you stored with straight up tap water, the purification chemicals in the water degrade plastic gallon jugs. (Sunlight will too) To prevent this, pour the water into a clean tub and let it stand overnight or boil it and most of the chlorine will go away. There are also newer material jugs that you can use in the place of your gallon jugs that are specifically designed to store water CLEANLY for an extended duration. They cost a bit, but they work. Plastic gallon jugs will leach the plastic into the water and it'll taste bad, and I assume that it's bad for you to boot.

So short answer to your question, yes boiling water will kill most anything living in it. It will not remove all chemicals, however.

Get a filter, purification supplies and higher quality storage.

Better yet, get a well and don't worry about it.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. - William F. Buckley

I need to seriously bolster my water preps. I just bought a Sawyer water bottle with 0.1 micron filter. It's primarily for hiking, but as I'm sure many AFTers can appreciate, most of the things I buy have a secondary prepping purpose. The filter requires backflushing every so often, and there's a 60cc syringe provided in the pack. The nice thing is that will filter everything except viruses (they make a virus version), but sediment, bacteria and cysts won't get through. $29.95 at Walmart and it's guaranteed to filter a million gallons on the same filter, which I can probably remove and use as an inline filter with a little jury rigging.I had to get rid of my 55 gallon drums when we moved, but If I can make space I'll get another one. I've been considering stacking two as they'll take up the same floor space as one. A simple frame welded together should be enough to do it. It'll give me an excuse to clear out some junk. A couple of hours with the chop saw and welder and I should be able to add 110 gallons to our stock. A business near here sold me the other two for $25 so i may swing by on Monday and ask if they have more. They're steel, but they were clean and epoxy coated inside and I bought some food grade plastic liners for them just in case.

"Buy it cheap. Stack it deep""Any community that fails to prepare, with the expectation that the federal government will come to the rescue, will be tragically wrong." Michael Leavitt, HHS Secretary.

Nice! If you had 220 gallons of water and budgeted yourself to around a gallon a day, that's about three quarters of a year of fresh water.

That's a lot of time to find yourself a nice, secure, permanent supply. And water should be number one or two in everyone's survival plan. My personal number one is OPSEC, I.e. I'm not telling everyone what I'm up to. There are a few that know, and they are the ones that are skilled, driven, and team oriented.

Number two is water. There is an artisan well in my BOL and the water coming out is absolutely delicious. We've built a shed atop it so it looks like somewhere we put lawn care items. We've put a hand pump and an electrical pump that can be powered with a generator, which was a major pain in the ass because the aquifer was about thirty feet down.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. - William F. Buckley

Yes, boiling will inactivate H7N9 and all other viruses. They are rather fragile actually, and do not form the resistant spores or cysts that bacteria and parasites can form.

However, water quality is only as good as the quality of the container it is placed into, so boiling water and then pouring it into a rusted 55 gallon drum won't make a lot of sense, long-term.

If H7N9 breaks out into a pandemic, it is not a threat as a water-borne agent...rather, we might find loss of water and wastewater treatment capabilities if utility workers become ill en masse. This can be prevented only by vaccination, use of antivirals such as tamiflu, and extreme social distancing.

Hang tight and start thinking about your water supply. I live on a spring-fed lake but even that water supply can be polluted & unusable. Chlorine bleach is great to have on hand, as a few drops in water forms hypochlorite, which is the same disinfectant used in municipal water systems. Follow these guidelines:

Get some Cube4water cubes and a Berkey water filter. I have enough for 250 gallons of water with the cubes and my WaterBob and the 4 -5 gallon water bottles. With two people that will last 4 months and I have water only about 3 miles away. Can drive my car to it fill up some cubes and start to make it potable. I have dry bleach to make sanitizing solution, add it to the "dirty water", run that water through a coffee filter again then I will run it through the Berkey. Should be good water to drink.

go to youtube they have all sorts of how to instructions. i learned how to take free objects and make a excellent water filter. items needed two liter soda bottle, jack knife, three sizes of stones large, medium, small, charcoal cut into smaller pieces, about four scoops of sand, and grass or if you have it use cloth. Replace or clean cloth after each use, replace grass if that is used. Replace charcoal once a week.

All soda containers are made of food grade plastic. Bakerys will gladly give you big covered buckets they used to store or get in frostings. They have handles for easy carrying, food grade and free.

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